Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And you know, a few days ago, we hung out in Iconium for a long time. The days before that, we went and dusted off whatever we could to try to find some secrets in old Lystra and Derby. But for the last few days, we've been paling around in Pisidian Antioch on the frontier between Galatia, Phrygia, and Pasidia. And what do you know? We're learning stuff, and it's painting a picture of how Christianity turned out in the part of the world that the letter of Galatians was written to in the first place. And I've got a bit more that I want to dust off there today. So we're going to do that. And then at the end of this conversation, it will be time for our grand proclamation as to our historical question of whether or not Christianity worked out for the churches that originally received the letter to the Galatians. All right, we're going to pick up where we left off right now. Jeffrey, play some music, and here we go. Obviously, this was a very pro-Roman town, since everybody there owed the property they had, or at least all the Romans did, to the blessing of the emperor. So they built a whole temple early on to Caesar Augustus, but within three or four hundred years, the archaeological records tell us that they converted the temple of Caesar Augustus into a church, you know, to Jesus from the Bible. So that tells a story, right? To convert the most impressive ancient temple, the connection back to old Rome and the founding myths of your town, to convert that to a church? Dang, that's a pretty big deal. We know the names of a couple of bishops who were there. A guy, I don't know these people, I gotta look closely at my notes here. A guy named Optamianus. Optimianus. That's a pretty cool name. I mean, I didn't say it cool enough, but it's a real cool name. And then Eustathius. That's not as cool a name. Eustathius. Optamianus. Yeah, no comparison between the two. But Optimianus was invited to the Council of Constantinople, and Eustathius was invited to the Council of Chalcedon. If you don't know what those councils are, that's okay. It would be a huge honor to get invited to that. And what it means is like only the bishops from the really big churches, the really influential ones, would have got that invite. So what that tells us is that in the 300s and 400s, Christianity was doing very well. And either overtly or secondarily, both of those councils very much affirmed the theology of Paul and the theology of the book of Galatians, causing me to say that the Bible gives us the strong impression that the church took and Galatians worked in Poseidian Antioch. What little historical records we have indicate that the church stuck and Galatians worked in Pisidian Antioch, and that the church thrived there alongside Iconium, with a major bishop operating out of there for a very long time. And the archaeology tells us that they converted their temple to Caesar Augustus. They converted the building that was emblematic of their founding legend, their founding myth, to something that was meant to exalt Christ after a few hundred years. So, yeah, I think we can say with confidence that Poseidon Antioch was a huge win for the gospel, and that the initial returns that we see in Acts 13, with them being very responsive, that never really seems to change until the Seljuk period when the Muslims conquer Turkey in the 11th and 12th centuries. I mean, really, until the sword shows up to snuff out the light of the church there, it is there and it is thriving. But we got one more little exercise here that I forgot to do with Iconium, and now we're gonna do it with both Iconium and Possidian Antioch, and that is we're just gonna go there real quick and Google church and see if they have anything going. I don't know what the ground rules are in Turkey. Can you have church still? Are you allowed? Alright, hang on. I'm going and I'm looking. Alright, we're gonna start in Possidian Antioch. And uh yeah, a couple things are popping up. Okay, well that one's temporarily closed. That one is permanently closed. St. Paul Khaleesi? That's a pretty cool name. That sounds like a nod to Daenerys Targaryen or something. Ooh, I d man, I have no idea what I'm looking at. This says it's a church, but these ruins don't make any sense to me. This is a very old church that I'm looking at. Dang it, it's all it's all in Turkish. Wait, I found something. Uh the church to the west of the city measures big. It has three naves with a basilica. Ha! And it shows the name of the archbishop. What what did I say the guy's name was? Optimus. Obtamiamus, whatever it was. Uh this actually mentions him. It says there was a large courtyard next to this church. This is awesome. I'm just finding this in real time. There's a large courtyard built to the north of this church, and the stone floor is covered. Oh, there's mosaics there. I can see the name of the archbishop in this mosaic in Greek, and I can even bumblingly sound it out because is what they taught me in seminary. Oh, this is really cool. Okay, this thing I found, it's not on the internet per se. It's just a tourist took a picture of a bilingual sign at these ruins near Pissidia and Antioch, and that's what I was just reading to you from. So that's really cool. Okay, apparently you can still see a decent chunk of this church. Oh, that is rad. I'm glad we did this. Yeah, it looks like there are more Central Church of Antiochia. Is it new? No. Okay, there's another church ruin right here. There's a lot, and it's fairly well preserved. This is cool. I would like to go there. It looks like about between 50 and 100,000 people live in the town that is now the site of Poseidon Antioch today. Oh, that's really neat. Okay, I'm gonna search a little wider area here. I'd like to see if there's any churches that are still going. I I don't know how things work in Turkey, whether I mean how much you can have church or whatever. Hey! But here's one. That's a beautiful church. I mean, obviously the church I'm looking at that I just pulled up, which is near Pisidian Antioch, or the modern side of it. It's a nice modern looking Orthodox basilica. Oh, but it says it's temporarily closed. I wonder why. I hope it permanently reopens. Yeah, a nineteenth century Armenian church. Okay, so there's recently been Christianity here to whatever extent it's been allowed with the changing seasons of Turkish government and whatnot. I tend to think of Turkey as being a little more tolerant of stuff than maybe some of the um the neighboring Muslim-dominated countries around there. Okay. Well, that was pretty cool. Most of the churches I found are ruins. Some of them go all the way back to the era we're talking about. Dang, I had no idea that even existed. But some of them are more recent and look like at least within a few generations, there's still been a Christian presence and an interest in attending church here. So it's pretty cool. All right, that was fun. I know that's such a weird thing for you to listen in on me Googling things. Because don't we all have like a I'm Googling things, I'm doing something on the computer voice. Hopefully, Jeff cleaned it up a little bit so that was less boring than it could have been. No one likes listening to other people Google, but that was really fun to go and check that out for me. And I think now we can just make our our broad proclamation. This is a big moment for us in the season on Galatians. This is a big moment right now in the epilogue we're doing on Galatians. This is a big moment in us tracking down the answers to this interesting historical question that is, did Galatians work? I think we can now say, unequivocally, that Iconium and Poseidon Antioch demonstrate strong evidence for Christianity lingering, for the book of Galatians being well received and informing what they believed and what they did. And for as much as you could expect two little towns like Lystra and Derby that are largely lost to history to have evidence, the evidence is larger than what you would think, looking at those unexcavated hills sitting there in the wilds of southern Galatia, southern Turkey to this day. So that's awesome. That was a hard question, and we went and found answers. I do want to give ourselves just a little bit of insurance by looking at a couple of the other proposed locations up north, but that's only going to take one day because there just isn't much there. But if there are two towns that maybe, maybe, maybe Galatians might have been addressed to, we'll take a quick glance at that. And then after tomorrow, we're pretty much just into put a bow on it territory, think about what we take from this book and where it fits in our larger process of making sense of the whole Bible, and then I guess we're on to Philemon. Huh, I'm gonna miss you, Gulatia. It's been a lot of fun. All right, I know I've mentioned it before, but I will mention it again on the way out the door. I would be so, so grateful if you would come with me to the next season on Philemon. This one's been a blast, and even though Philemon is written by the same guy, Paul, it's gonna be a totally different season. We're gonna do different things, we're gonna come at it from different angles, it raises totally different questions, but also Philemon is gonna really round out our understanding of I mean, really, what we've been doing for the last 300-ish episodes, and that is wrapping our brains around the book of Galatians, but also, come on, you're smart. We've been using Galatians as a launching point to shore up our understanding of the life of the Apostle Paul, the early church, the book of Acts, early theological disputes, and I've just loved it. I think it's been it's been a huge help for me personally. I hope it has been for you as well. Philemon is going to do more of that, but it's also gonna take us in some totally new and different directions. So I really hope you'll come along with me for that, and I hope you'll invite somebody because that'll make it more fun. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.